


Swallowed Down Deep

by CatKing_Catkin



Series: Widomauk Week [8]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Body Horror, Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Experimental Style, Friendship/Love, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing in the Rain, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Panic Attacks, Queerplatonic Relationships, Rain, Self-Harm, Talking, Team as Family, Visceral, Vomiting, Warning: Trent Ikithon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 01:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19163341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: Caleb has suffered quietly for months, but his hanahaki disease is entering the final stages. The night his secret gets out, he's left grappling for a way to either confess his feelings or muster up the courage to cure himself and render the matter a moot point.To his surprise, Molly turns out to have some secrets too, and he's willing to trade if only to keep Caleb from hurting himself.(Written for Widomauk Week 2019, Day 8, prompt "flowers")





	Swallowed Down Deep

He hid the disease well for a while, feigning a weak constitution and a predilection to colds, hiding the bloody flower petals in his various pockets until he could incinerate them in secret. But the disease progressed, as he’d always known it would, until a few scattered flower petals became whole blooms, until the roots inside him had spread into thorny vines that twined around his ribs and lungs until every breath hurt and the back of his throat burned constantly with the taste of blood.

Nott had known about it for months, of course, since not long after the sickness had taken root in him. He’d never been able to keep any secrets from her for long. But apparently this disease wasn’t something halflings or goblins were prone to, and even with all her studies and knowledge, she hadn’t known what it meant. He’d convinced her that it was nothing, a minor curse, a spell gone wrong that was more inconvenient than dangerous.

But that lie grew harder and harder to tell. She fussed over him in secret, mixing up brews and medicinal teas with her alchemy set to try and ease his symptoms. Sometimes they at least helped him sleep. He was grateful to her for that. But she also started making oblique suggestions that this was maybe something he should bring up to Jester, and he knew that eventually she would decide on his behalf, and that he wouldn’t truly be able to stop her.

So maybe it was some twisted sort of mercy that, in the end, the choice was taken out of his hands. In the end, a bad bout of cold and rain on the road got into his lungs and compounded the already fierce pain. Even then, he was able to hide it until they stopped to make camp that night. Then he sat and tried to focus on conjuring up the hut as everyone else went about their own business. He realized much too late that the spell was one strain too many, and realized it perhaps three seconds before his strength gave out entirely, before his vision pulsed to white and the world spun away from him and when he came back to himself he was vomiting blood and flowers into the dirt, surrounded by his panicking friends who were all talking at once.

Eventually, they got him laid down and bundled up, tucked a little under the cart to provide some shelter from the rain. It was Nott who explained the situation because no one would permit Caleb to speak until he’d worked his way through a waterskin. Mercifully, she didn’t have to explain much. All the others were quite familiar with the disease and what it meant.

Unfortunately, this meant that when he was cleared to speak, he was immediately peppered with questions by a frantic Jester. “Caleb, who is it? Why haven’t you told them?! Don’t you know you’ll _die_ if you don’t?!”

“It might not be that easy, Jes,” Fjord said, patting her shoulder placatingly. “They could be someone far away.”

“Then he needs to tell us who they are and where they are so we can go there _right now_ and he can tell them he loves them so he doesn’t _die!”_

Beau seemed strongly in agreement of this plan, and Fjord didn’t actually have any arguments against it, not as such. Nott was, at first, the only one who tried to put the breaks on affairs. “I’m sure he’ll tell us, but, but it’s not fair to ask him to tell us everything right now! That’s a big secret to tell, and he’s kept it for so long. Why don’t we let him sleep, and tell us in the morning?”

“I hate to say it, but Nott might be on to something.” It was the first Molly had spoken in a long while. After they’d all gotten Caleb settled, he’d retreated to the sputtering firepit they’d managed to set up in the hollow of a tree before everything went to hell. Now, as he drew nearer to the group, Caleb could see him clutching a waterskin that was steaming faintly from its open mouth. “Having secrets pulled out of you by the roots is nasty business. I am speaking from experience, remember, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” He finally settled himself on the damp ground by Caleb’s head, then pressed the waterskin into his hands. “Here. Might take the edge off.”

Caleb took a cautious sip and found the flask to be full of some heady mix of whiskey, peppermint tea, and honey. He barely managed to hold back his coughing as the burn hit his throat, but was rewarded for his efforts by the feeling of the roots and vines softening, their vicelike grip on his lungs easing just a little. This time, his coughing was weak and wet rather than dry and cutting, resulting in only a few petals fluttering to the soaked grass.

He looked back up at Molly with a newfound respect, gratitude a weak little murmur in his heart alongside the familiar, painful knots of unrequited love. That gratitude only grew more pronounced as he heard what Molly was saying.

“--going to get any worse overnight. This kind of thing takes months to progress, doesn’t it? It’s getting bad now, but if we give him a night to pull himself together and find a way to tell us in his own words, I think we’ll all be happier for it.”

“But he _is_ going to have to tell us,” Beau finished, folding her arms and looking mutinous.

“I _will_ bust out the Zone of Truth,” Jester added, her face as set and stern as Caleb had ever seen it.

“I think that’s fair,” Nott said, fiddling anxiously with her flask as she glanced back at Caleb. “Don’t you think that sounds fair, Caleb?”

Caleb hesitated only a moment, and then he nodded once, looking from face to face until he found that he couldn’t meet Molly’s gaze at all and it fell back to the dirt instead. A night would be enough time to prepare himself – not to confess his feelings to the man who was not very far away at all, but to see to it that this ceased to be a problem entirely.

He’d waited long enough. It was time to stop dithering and do what had to be done.

He couldn’t make himself speak beyond that, but it still seemed to be answer enough for his friends. Slowly, they drifted back to finish setting up camp for the night, talking in murmured voices about how best to accommodate for the lack of either a magic shelter or an alarm. Caleb watched them go, his chest on fire and his stomach tied in knots. Mechanically, he tried to lift the waterskin to his mouth for another sip, but the weakness in his hands coupled with another fit of coughing nearly made him drop it, spilling everything.

A pair of warm hands caught and covered his just in time, holding them steady. As his vision cleared, Caleb realized Molly was still kneeling beside him and a full-body shiver raced through him, the physical pain suddenly not half as fierce as the _longing_ that lanced up his spine.

“There we go,” Molly whispered, helping guide the drink to Caleb’s mouth once he seemed to have recovered his breath. Caleb gulped the brew down gratefully and let out a shaky sigh as his throat cleared a little more. “Is that helping any?”

 _“Ja_ ,” Caleb rasped, wiping his mouth on the back of his throat. “Um, _d-danke_. Yes.”

He heard the smile in Molly’s voice, felt long, deft fingers brushing his sodden bangs back from his forehead. “Happy to help. It’s not going to cure what ails you, of course, but it might at least let you sleep. Might buy us a little more time.”

Molly was so close and so warm and being so kind and Caleb had a flash of realization that he could just say it all now, could put this entire matter to rest. His throat was agony and his voice was ruined but if he could make himself say those three words then there wouldn’t have to be any more of this waiting and worry.

He got as far as opening his mouth to do just that before the weight of reality came crashing back down on him. Speaking his feelings aloud would only solve his problems if they were _returned_ , and he could not see any possible way that they would be. Oh, Molly would probably pity him, lie to him, but every accounting of this sickness he’d ever heard about told Caleb that that wouldn’t be nearly enough and might in fact only hasten his painful, broken-hearted demise. No matter how certain Jester felt, it wouldn’t be that easy, not for him. It never had been.

No, he had one way out, and as soon as he had a moment of privacy, he would take it, just as he should have when he first started to feel that pain in his chest.

So instead, what Caleb wound up saying was: “Um, h-how did you know?”

“Know what?”

“What sort of drink to make. For this, ah--” He gestured somewhat helplessly at himself. “This condition.”

“Hm.” But that thoughtful hum was all the sound Molly made as he helped Caleb take another few sips. Then: “I’ll tell you tomorrow, shall I? A secret for a secret. Seems only fair.”

“I suppose.” But Caleb wondered with a guilty lurch in the pit of his stomach if he would even care come the morning.

Those thoughts continued to weigh on him all throughout the evening, as everyone got camp set up and got a mostly-cold supper pulled together. The small, sputtering fire was used to heat up a pot of broth that Nott then took charge of helping spoon into Caleb’s mouth. The conversation and general atmosphere was subdued, both from the discomfort of the rain and the worry no doubt weighing them all down. But he could tell they were all trying to keep up appearances, for his sake. He loved them for it, no matter how many bloody, bitter feelings that word had otherwise been contaminated with.

Eventually, they all bedded down for the night, scattered around the clearing to take whatever shelter they could find, curling up under trees to hide from the worst of the rain. Caleb could tell it was easing up, anyway, the downpour fading to a silvery drizzle. But the chill would linger for a while yet. He could feel it as just another pain in his chest.

And with Caleb still in no fit state to put up an alarm, the others talked even more seriously about taking watch. The first to sit up was Beau, and Caleb told himself that he couldn’t creep away now, Beau was far too observant and would doubtless see him, doubtless question and he wasn’t sure if he felt in any fit state to lie. So he waited, feigning sleep, even managing to drift in and out of a doze for a while at a time. But when Beau retired to bed, it was Nott who took her place, and even though Nott wasn’t always _quite_ as observant as Beau, Caleb knew well from past experience how hyperattuned she could be to him. She would also absolutely notice, and he’d never been able to lie to her even while at his best.

And then, damn it all to all the hells, but Molly took the third watch. Caleb watched him bidding Nott a good night, watched him settle down to tend the fire with his eyes seeming to glow like beacons in the darkness, and was seized by a sudden, overwhelming urge to cry. The feeling of Nott returning to curl up against his back brought no comfort this time. His fingers clutched and squeezed at the long empty waterskin as if he could draw up the memory of Molly’s warmth through it and take comfort from that, but there was nothing, only cold and pain and dread.

He had to go. He had to go _now_. And yet, each and every one of his limbs felt heavy as lead, laden down with dread, and as he laid there in the dark and the rain surrounded by friends who would never understand, with the man he loved so close and yet so far, Caleb was finally forced to admit to himself that he was _terrified_.

Curing himself of this disease was what needed to be done. And yet, doing so would also take away any feelings he had for Mollymauk Tealeaf. His smile, his eyes, his voice and his wit, his cheer and determination, all of that would cease to mean _anything_ to Caleb. That part of his heart would simply be cauterized like an infected wound.  

More than that, he would be giving up the fantasies he’d nursed in his bruised and tired heart – fantasies that he’d known from the start could never come true, but which he’d selfishly clung to all the same. Dreams of reciprocation, of finally finding the perfect time to say how he felt and the perfect way to say it so that Molly would be _happy_ to know that he was loved by such a broken-down wreck of a man. Dreams of being held close, enfolded by those scarred arms in elaborately embroidered sleeves and shielded by the scents of incense and sandalwood, dreams of being kissed breathless as much as he wanted.

Nothing he ever could have had, of course, not _truly_ , but they’d still been dreams he could hide in for a little while whenever the rot in his head grew to be too much. They’d kept him going. And he was about to give them up. He was about to surrender any chance, any pretense, that he could be anything beyond what Trent had made him.

Even if it was to save his own life, the prospect was desperately terrifying and, in that moment, seemed entirely not worth it.

The thought broke his composure like a shattered bone, and he could no longer bite back the whimpery sob that escaped him. Unfortunately, the rain had eased up too much to muffle the sound – he heard Nott stir behind him, and heard the whisper of wet leaves and twigs that betrayed Molly doing the same. “Caleb?” the tiefling called, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “You all right over there?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Caleb saw Molly start to draw closer, felt Nott sit up behind him and heard her yawn. His own heart was racing like a rabbit’s in his chest. He had to go. He had to go _now_. If he stayed, if he let his best friend and the object of his pining curl up on either side of him to comfort him, then he would crack and he would tell Molly everything and the rejection really, truly _would_ kill him.

“I, I’m sorry,” Caleb heard himself stammering, felt himself starting to claw his way back to his feet, his boots slipping and sliding in the mud and wet grass. He had to cling to the cart for support until the world stopped spinning quite so badly, until his swimming vision fixed on a break in the treeline ahead. Yes. He could run, get ahead of them, do the job before they could stop him or he lost his nerve.

Nott grabbed one wrist, Molly grabbed the other. “Caleb, what’s—” Molly began, and then Caleb tore himself out of both their grips and ran.

He was stumbling and staggering and desperately unsteady on his feet, but there were plenty of trees to support himself against and the mere act of running surprised them both so much as to give him a head start. He ran on, graceless and desperate, until at last his foot caught under a trailing tree root and sent him sprawling hard into the muck. There he stayed for a moment, curled in on himself, pathetically hacking up lavender blossoms and snapdragons until the scent was so thick on his tongue he thought he might finally choke to death. 

His breath was a roaring in his ears, but over the din of it, he could hear Nott and Molly calling his name and drawing close. No time. _No time_. Caleb desperately scrabbled at his shirt, tugging it up until he could press his fingers against his chest, just over his heart where the blooms had first sprouted from.

He took a painful breath, squeezed his eyes shut tight, and started to mutter the incantation Trent had taught him so long ago. It would hurt, it would be _agony_ , but he would only have to endure it for a few seconds.

The spell completed just as Nott and Molly dropped to their knees beside him, and the next breath Caleb drew in turned into superheated steam in his throat, down into his lungs – no fire, of course, but the brief surge of air at such a brutally high temperature was enough to scorch the petals and scour the thorns, withering the leaves to nothing and reducing the choking vines to nothing more than dead, brittle stems.

Or at least, that was how he knew the spell _would_ work. The agony of holding such ferocious heat inside of him, even for a few seconds, was blinding enough to keep Caleb from being rationally aware of anything else for what felt like a lifetime, where the only sounds he knew were the sound of burning and his own screaming.

He must have lost consciousness for a moment, maybe longer. When Caleb came back to himself, he was panting like a bellows and had tears on his face mingling with the rain. The rain itself felt like needles of ice on his desperately feverish skin. Most of him was still in the muck but someone had lifted his head into their lap. He felt a hand running fretfully through his hair while another rucked up his shirt to feel his chest, to test his heartbeat. “Caleb? Caleb? Come on, talk to me…”

As his vision cleared, he was able to make out Molly’s silhouette looming over him, a lighter shadow against the rainy night with his bright red eyes and his jewelry catching on every faint pinprick of light. As the pain subsided to a dull roar, Caleb could make out the sound of Nott a short distance away, talking to the others who had of course been woken by the sounds. But he couldn’t make himself look away from Molly.

“Caleb?” he heard the tiefling saying. He saw Molly pull out another waterskin, uncork it with his teeth, and then hold it to Caleb’s mouth. “Can you say something? Anything?”

“I—” Caleb croaked, and then his eyes went wide with horror as he felt his throat starting to close up again. In a desperate, panicking flail, he rolled away from Molly and wound up back on his hands and knees in the muck, coughing. When his vision cleared, sure enough, he saw a scattering of lavender flower petals there on the ground in front of him – scorched at the edges, but still vibrant in color, still very much alive.

And now the tears were returning, thick and hot and burning with the unfairness of it all. “It didn’t work,” Caleb whispered, starting to shake. He felt hands taking hold of his shoulder, guiding him to move and sit so he was at least resting against a tree. He couldn’t look to see who it was, couldn’t think beyond the one inescapable fact in front of him. “It didn’t work…”

It hadn’t worked. Why hadn’t it worked? It had worked when Trent had first taught this spell to Astrid. She’d gone into the room with him and then he’d heard her screaming and she’d come out _changed_ but she’d also come out cured.

Maybe the damp and the rain had weakened the effects. Or maybe he hadn’t really wanted it to work. Maybe, even now, he’d been too much of a coward.

He drifted for a while after that, lost in a sea of panic and pain. All he was aware of were voices talking, water being tipped into his mouth, faces in front of him that were indistinct but for the worry in their eyes. But eventually, slowly, it sank in for Caleb that the voices were gone, that he was alone again, but for the familiar lavender silhouette sitting tucked beside him so that they could both take some shelter from the rain.

“Caleb? You back with us?”

Caleb nodded miserably, staring fixedly at a random patch of dirt. He didn’t dare risk opening his mouth right now. Possibly not ever again.

“Do you want to talk about what the hell you were trying to do just now?”

He shook his head immediately, tucking his chin a little further into his chest. He heard Molly bite back a sigh, and the frustration in that sound cut deeper than a blade. He flinched, hunching his shoulders, as if in doing so he could hide from the mess he had made and was making of _everything_.

Silence stretched on for a handful of seconds, where he was aware of nothing but the occasional raindrop and the heat of Molly’s gaze on him. When the tiefling spoke again, his voice was gentler.

“Do you want to nod or shake your head while I guess what you were trying to do just now?”

Something about the question made him giggle – a weak, bubbling little sound, but at least it didn’t hurt too much. After a moment’s consideration, Caleb nodded. Molly wasn’t leaving, so he supposed he might as well manage that much.

“Good. See? We’re compromising. Compromise is good.” Seeing that Caleb wasn’t leaned back entirely against the tree, Molly rested a hand on his back – tentatively, at first, and then he started to rub in big, slow circles when Caleb didn’t pull away. Far from wanting to pull away, it took a significant effort of his weakened willpower to not lean shamelessly into the touch. Maybe it was his imagination or a placebo, but he fancied that just having Molly touching him made his chest hurt a little less.

“Now, I don’t pretend to understand much of anything about how your magic works, or magic in general, but judging by how you’ve been acting tonight and what I’ve heard you saying…were you trying to remove the flowers inside you with magic?”

His stomach gave an unpleasant little jolt and Caleb suddenly felt cold to his fingertips. He’d thought he would have a few more guesses to sit through before getting to the heart of the matter. As always, Molly proved more perceptive than most might think just to look at him.

Still, he’d agreed to this, and lying didn’t even occur to him. He would have made a poor liar considering the state he was in even if it had. So Caleb simply hugged himself a little tighter and nodded, just once.

Molly made a low, sad sound. “You know what’s supposed to happen if you do that, don’t you?”

Again, a nod. Caleb worried at his lower lip just to feel a different sort of pain besides the stabbing fire in his chest and the twisted, longing ache in his gut.

“Caleb, I don’t understand. You’d really rather stop feeling _anything_ for someone you love than just come right out and tell them?”

Now a renewed stinging in his eyes joined every other pain in his body. Molly sounded upset, even hurt, and a part of Caleb wondered madly if he _knew_ and a part of Caleb was seized with the desperate impulse to confess everything so Molly would understand. But he managed to drag all of himself back into line and just nod again, choking back the threat of a sob.

He thought Molly would certainly pull away, would leave him there to his misery now that Caleb had made his resolve clear. But he didn’t. He stayed, rubbing Caleb’s back and lending his warmth, as the drizzle pattered gently against the leaves overhead.

Finally, Molly spoke again: “You asked me how I knew what to do for this disease?”

That was a sufficiently unexpected question that Caleb’s head snapped up before he could think about it, even if finding himself meeting Molly’s gaze made him freeze all over again. But at least he was able to also manage a generally assenting mumble in reply.

Molly’s smile was lopsided and wry. He reached down, delicately plucked a flower petal from the mud, and rubbed it thoughtfully between his fingers. “I’ve had this happen to me.”

It felt like getting kicked in the chest, but the jolt was enough to let his mind whirl fully back into life. Caleb’s thoughts were suddenly racing. He’d never known, never even suspected. How had he never suspected? And yet, this revelation brought with it the taste of certainty – maybe not relief, but at least the certain knowledge of one way forward.

“Who?” he asked in little more than a ragged whisper.

“Yasha.”

Caleb’s shock must have shown on his face, because Molly actually laughed. “Not like _that_. Not in the way I think it’s usually supposed to be? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Yasha and I have had our fun on occasion, but we’ve never wanted it to be more than that. She is my very dearest friend. That’s always been enough for us.” He laid his hand lightly against his chest where his shirt hung open, just over one of his lungs. “It was certainly enough for that.”

Caleb swallowed painfully. “I don’t understand.” It felt as if he were fumbling for understanding by his fingertips.

“I still don’t know if I understand, truth be told. But Gustav knew a little, and Desmond knew more, and we—” He rocked a hand back and forth. “—put some pieces together, I suppose.” His smile took on a note of sadness, and his gaze, like Caleb’s, fell to a random patch of muck. “I wasn’t always so… _okay_ with her just wandering off like she does, you know?”

Caleb didn’t quite know what to say to that, couldn’t reconcile this admission with Molly’s apparently easy, effortless faith in Yasha to always come back. But he didn’t quite know how to put that into words without sounding insulting, so he simply nodded and made another assenting sort of sound, quietly encouraging Molly to continue. After a moment to recover his composure, Molly did so.

“I think she was the first person I ever thought of as a friend. Everyone else in the circus was family. They’d seen me at the start. At my worst. And I think we were never going to be friends or equals after that. But Yasha joined after I pulled myself together. Yasha was the first person I could be the person I wanted to be around. And then she left.”

Caleb saw one of Molly’s hands tighten in his lap. After only a moment’s hesitation, moving with a boldness that could only be born of the two of them sitting together in the dark, Caleb reached out to give it a gentle squeeze. The downturned corners of Molly’s mouth lifted just a little, and he kept going.

“It hurt. I didn’t understand why she had to keep leaving me, and you know Yasha, she’s terrible at explaining. But I knew it was important to her, to come and go as she liked. So I tried to be okay with it. And when I couldn’t be, I tried to pretend I was okay with it. I tried so _hard_ , Caleb. And then one day I started coughing up petals.”

Even in his miserable, exhausted state, Caleb could put the pieces together from there. “Your feelings weren’t, ah, necessarily romantic in nature. But you swallowed them down just as hard, and they… _festered_ just the same.”

Molly seemed to appreciate being spared at least that much of an explanation. He nodded easily. “That’s what Desmond and Gustav thought must have happened, after they explained to me what was happening and I swore on every god in the Empire that I wasn’t hiding someone in a town we’d left.”

“So what happened?”

“I told her how I felt, of course. Not right away. They had to browbeat me into it. But I told her, in the end.”

“But nothing changed, did it? I mean, ah, she still leaves sometimes.”

“She does. Because she has to. But she explained to me why after she knew how much it was upsetting me to not know. And she told me she was sorry that she was causing me any pain, that she hated to leave me, too. And—” Molly gave a little half-shrug. His smile was distant and soft and achingly fond. “That was enough.”

Caleb squirmed a little where he sat, twisting his fingers in his lap and trying to fit all of this into his understanding of the world. It wasn’t easy. After all: “I thought the disease could only be cured either by, um, removing the blooms, or by your feelings being reciprocated.”

“They _were_ reciprocated, Caleb. Nothing changed, because nothing could change. But she still heard what I had to say, she understood it, and she told me she felt the same. At least mostly the same. I don’t know. Nothing about this condition makes any sense to me, but—”

And then Caleb’s heart leapt up into his throat as Molly was cut off by a bout of coughing – not half as bad or as painful as what had been plaguing Caleb, but alarming all the same, bad enough that the tiefling clamped a hand over his mouth.

What was more alarming was that, when Molly took his hand away, he immediately tried to pull off a sleight of hand trick with it – subtle, well-practiced, probably something that most would struggle to notice. But Caleb had been a conman, too, for longer than he liked to think about, and still had those instincts and that eye. Quicker than he thought himself capable of, his own hand darted out to catch Molly’s wrist, and surprise kept Molly still long enough for Caleb to turn his hand palm up and then feel his mind all but short out in an attempt to process what he was seeing.

Petals. Three flower petals. In the light of the weak, distant fire, he could just make out that they were red, and stained at the edges with darker color that might have been blood.

“—but that much did,” Molly finished belatedly with a sigh. When he closed his fingers and gently tugged his wrist away, Caleb was too stunned to stop him. “I’ve never heard of anyone catching this twice, though. Always knew I was special.”

“Who?” Caleb whispered. “ _When_?” He wondered wildly how long this had been festering and growing inside Molly. How much time did he have before he was wracked with as much debilitating pain as Caleb was? Before the roots and thorns stole his breath forever? The thought made him feel cold as ice with terror.

Molly hummed thoughtfully. “A while, I suppose. Though your definition of ‘a while’ and mine might be very different. In a weird way, I suppose I should thank you. Everyone’s been paying so much attention to you lately that I’ve been able to keep this quiet. As for ‘who’—” He actually _smiled_. Caleb could hear it in his voice as Molly turned properly to face him, as he reached out to tap Caleb lightly on the nose as if he were a disobedient cat. “ _Well_ , that’s not exactly a fair question to ask, is it, Mister Caleb? Not from _you_.”

Caleb drew back a little, swatting Molly’s hand away impatiently and making an irritable sound. “Mollymauk, is, is now truly the time for playing games? Your situation and mine are far from comparable. Whoever you have feelings for, they—” His shoulders slumped. His heart hurt. The sight of Molly’s smile was so beautiful he was dimly amazed it didn’t light up the night, and Caleb looked away from it. “—of course they would want you, if only they knew. You should tell them. You _need_ to tell them. Spare yourself this pain.” He couldn’t imagine that there could exist a person who wouldn’t count themselves lucky to have Mollymauk Tealeaf’s affections. He couldn’t believe the tiefling, normally so bold and confident, was being so ridiculous about this.

“I appreciate the faith in me, Caleb,” Molly said, and he only sounded faintly sad.

That sadness, more than anything, resolved Caleb. He could spare Molly this. He could talk him into seeing sense. He could do this worthwhile thing, and as for himself, well…

…he’d figure it out. Maybe he’d try again to burn this out of himself. Maybe he’d just die. As much pain as he was in, this was still probably a kinder death than he deserved.

“If you’re going to be so godsdamned insistent about this,” Caleb huffed. “Then I will tell you. The people we love, w-we will say their names at the same time, all right? On three. No laughing. No judgement. We will say their names once and…perhaps that will make it easier to say it again.”

Even in the darkness, he could see the hesitation, the tension thrumming through Molly. But only for a moment – then, perhaps bolstered by the steel in Caleb’s voice, Molly nodded and took a deep breath. “On three?”

 _“Ja_.”

“One…”

“ _Zwei_ …”

“Three.”

At the same time and in the same breath, they said the same word.

“You.”

Silence fell with a the sudden, heavy finality of an axe, seeming to dampen all the sound in the world, seeming to make the rest of the world fade away but for the two of them staring into each other’s eyes, each grappling with the full weight of realization and reciprocation.

The moment was ruined when Caleb felt the heavy floral scents rising thick and fast in his throat again, so that he was forced to shove himself away from Molly to vomit into the mud once more.

It was an especially long and unpleasant bout of sickness, leaving his throat so choked with petals that there were moments where he struggled to breathe, leaving blood smeared around his mouth and dripping down the front of his shirt. But Molly was there to hold his hair, Molly was there to rub his back, and slowly Caleb became aware that he wasn’t just throwing up petals and blooms this time. He forced up stems and roots, their thorns scratching at the back of his throat and making it easier to heave. As he spat them out onto the pile of sodden, bloody flowers, Caleb took a deep breath and felt suddenly, fiercely dizzy with just how much air he was drawing in, with the feeling that he was breathing _freely_ for the first time in almost longer than he could remember.

“ _Was_?” he panted. “I, I mean…” He trailed away, utterly at a loss for words, grappling with far too many feelings to name.

“Caleb?” he heard Molly ask carefully, not pulling away. “That was, ah. That was a lot. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” Caleb stammered on instinct, out of so much practice. Then it hit him that it wasn’t just an excuse this time. He was breathing freely. He’d confessed his feelings. He wasn’t going to die, and Molly…had Molly really said the same thing? It seemed the sort of thing he must have hallucinated, but every breath was proof enough that it had been _real_.

He stared up at Molly in something like wonder, and this time there was an edge of sweetness to the ache that gripped his chest at the sight of the tiefling. At the sight of the man he loved and who, somehow, loved him too. “I’m _fine_ ,” Caleb whispered, and then collapsed fully into a fit of overwhelmed, overjoyed, desperately relieved laughter.

Molly held him steady through it though, after a minute or two, Caleb heard and felt him start to collapse into his own fit of coughing that didn’t stop. Then it was his turn to hold Molly steady and help him through the rough few minutes of throwing up flowers and stems. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Caleb’s had been, thankfully. Either the disease hadn’t progressed as far in him or else his natural pain resistance had bought him more time.

Not that it mattered now. The thought almost made him dissolve into delighted laughter again, but Caleb just barely managed to keep himself under control, simply rubbing Molly’s back as he got his breathing steady. “Mollymauk? How are you feeling?”

Molly gulped down another breath, then wiped his mouth on the back of his head and sat back heavily, shaking a little. “Better. So much better. Oh wow. It’s amazing what you can live with but that doesn’t mean it’s _pleasant_.”

“Agreed. It’s easy to forget. It’s nicer to be reminded.” They drew back to collapse together beneath another tree, a short distance nearer to the camp. Caleb wasn’t entirely sure if he felt up to walking just yet – freeing himself of the flowers had been an ultimately good and cleansing yet undeniably taxing thing. His legs felt weak and shaky. Molly seemed to be in a similar state.

It wasn’t so bad. Caleb felt strangely, pleasantly disconnected from his own body, and yet as he and Molly leaned heavily against one another he realized that that wasn’t entirely the right of it. What Caleb truly felt was disconnection from the everpresent weight on his shoulders, the anxieties and fears and self-loathing. But he felt amazingly present in his own body, and comfortable there just for now. He’d done a good thing, for himself and for Molly both, and he meant to bask in that for a little while longer here in the dark and the quiet with the rain washing him clean and Molly’s warmth beside him.

“I really want to kiss you,” Molly whispered. “But this would be a terribly unromantic time to do it.”

Smiling easily, Caleb reached to Molly’s belt and unhooked the water flask the tiefling had tried to offer him earlier. He held it out and Molly visibly brightened, then took a few swallows to clean out his mouth before offering the skin back to Caleb. Caleb took it and did the same, and as he drank he saw Molly practically vibrating with anticipation, so much so that after Caleb was done swallowing the water he barely had enough time to cork the waterskin back up before Molly pounced on him with such enthusiasm that they both sprawled back into the mud in a tangle of limbs and desperate, heated, open-mouthed kisses. Molly rolled over so that Caleb could have a respite from the muck, so that Caleb could settle on top of him and furrow his fingers in Molly’s hair and kiss him over and over and over again, moaning openly at the heady sweet taste of mutual desire, of acceptance.

The sound of their collapse was apparently one strange sound too many, however. Caleb was only dimly aware of the sound of footsteps drawing nearer. His mind was never entirely quiet, a part of it always on alert for danger, but everything felt much too nice for him to care too much there and then.

Sure enough, when the approaching figure spoke, it was only Nott. She sounded quite calm, under the circumstances, as she called back towards the camp where the others must still have been waiting.

“I don’t think we’re gonna have to have a talk tomorrow! I think Caleb’s going to be just fine!”

Her dry observation finally did the job of breaking them apart, but only because it made Molly laugh, and then of course Caleb laughed with him, and they lay tangled together in the mud and the cleansing rain and laughed together as the others came to see what all the fuss was about.


End file.
